


stuck in the teeth

by silentwalrus



Series: caveat emptor [9]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: It’s Not Great, M/M, Roy Has A Little Think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:21:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29340507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentwalrus/pseuds/silentwalrus
Summary: It’s like seeing pictures in clouds: one second just fluffy blobs, the next a thunderhead shaped like god’s middle finger bearing down directly on you.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Series: caveat emptor [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790881
Comments: 38
Kudos: 247





	stuck in the teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, i am not posting chronologically. The best way to read this series is from the future, where everything is written and posted already
> 
> Thank you to nonymos and aetataureate for beta!!
> 
> title from keep it down by migrant motel

Roy gets home, gets inside, shuts the door. He stands in the hallway, gloves and shoes and coat on, staring blankly at the vague moonlight glinting off the floortiles. 

Ed likes him. Ed wants him. It’s like seeing pictures in clouds: one second just fluffy blobs, the next a thunderhead shaped like god’s middle finger bearing down directly on you. Roy’s aware that that’s not quite the metaphor, but given he definitely feels lightningstruck it’s going to be close enough. 

Thinking of Ed as someone who is… attracted to him... is… strange. Not pleasant. There’s no satisfaction here, no flattery. He hadn’t noticed. Ed, who is so loud, whose every emotion scuds over his face like clouds over sunny sky, who is tactless, obvious, painfully blunt. He hadn’t noticed. Ed, who has the subtlety of a car crash, who had been _fifteen_ for their longest consecutive in-person contact back then and about as capable of dissembling as a moldy turnip - 

\- and Roy hadn’t fucking noticed. 

What _else_ hasn’t he noticed? 

He can excuse himself, point to how they’d hardly been in close quarters those years, explain how there’d been an apocalypse and a coup and all manner of more important things going on. That he’d locked Ed in as an ally, sorted him, and had no cause to spend resources unraveling him for leverage since then. That Ed had certainly never _acted_ as though Roy were anything more than an opportunity to exploit, a particularly annoying lever to pull, an ally too useful to drop over mere interpersonal friction. But attraction is a familiar weapon in Roy’s hands, and he hadn’t a clue that this whole time he’s had it held to Ed’s throat. 

But that is both true, and isn’t. It’s getting a bit ahead of himself to assume that if he had no fucking clue this was happening that he is in any way steering this barge at all. And - Riza and _Maes_ haven’t said anything, and they _would_ have, if _they’d_ noticed anything. If there was anything to notice. 

But - no. The signs _were_ there. Ed stealing his coffee, so casually that Roy had still thought it simply Ed mistaking the cup. Ed coming to his house, over and over, pushing into his space like he owned it, for a snake and a pig and a pool - each time with their own reasons, good ones, but not his only option by far. Pressing himself up against Roy. Playing with him, not backing down. Not backing away. 

And Roy thought it was all part of the game. From the very start he’d teased Ed, pulled his tail, delighted in this tiny little nutcase snapping at his hands. Played with him like a puppy even as he’d negotiated and threatened him like an adult. Fun, he’d thought: this vicious cute thing, flailing and yelping like Hayate even as he demanded respect and forced leverage and backed up every one of his childishly overblown threats, his impossible promises. It’s inaccurate to say Roy has never thought of Ed as a child, and on the whole it’s one of the least of the things he’ll be damned for. 

He’s not a child anymore. And Roy wouldn’t call himself an expert, but he thought he knew Ed, in all the ways that mattered. What he wanted, what he feared; the things he’d go to the mat for, the lines he wouldn’t cross. The limits of what his heart could stand for. 

Roy knows he is not a good man. Some disobeyed the order to invade Ishval, to kill civilians; he didn’t. Some were broken afterward, by what they did; he wasn’t. Certainly something of him had died at war, but nothing that hadn’t deserved to. So, he told himself. Alright. He’s cold, and damned, and he can do terrible things. Fine. He will use it. Guilt and regret are a pointless punishment if they do not drive action. Abasement is not atonement. Atonement is not _possible._ Change is. He has work to do. 

And Ed knows what kind of person Roy is. He’s known right from the start, when he’d been yanked up out of his wheelchair and pulled into the military, to use and be used in turn. 

It’s not that Roy doesn’t understand the contradictions of attraction. He will never be able to unlove Amestris, leaden lie-mouthed bitch that she is; he’s had his own share of dalliances, before the war, with older men and dangerous women and other various inadvisable fumblings. He knows what it is to want what you shouldn’t, and furthermore he’s well aware that what turns you on doesn’t tend to come from any place of carefully considered rationality. But if all Ed thought of him is of his body, he would not have reacted the way he did. He would not be avoiding Roy now. 

There is no such thing as benign attraction. It’s an exploitation point Roy has seen used countless times, deployed it himself, seen its effect. Looks are a weapon. How someone can make you feel is a weapon. And Ed proved that he knows this now, too, uses it himself, in his big-eyed blinks and thick-thin accent and changing hair. 

When Roy thinks of Ed now, he thinks _strong._ He thinks, _useful._ He thinks, _mine._

He needs to talk to someone about this. 


End file.
